Married Tax Cheaters Get Prison

FORT WORTH (CN) – The husband-and-wife owners of a Fort Worth-area tax preparation business were each sentenced to 5 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $4 million in restitution, prosecutors said. Sanford Taylor Hobbs, III, was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge John McBryde. His wife, Crystal La Von Mason-Hobbs, was sentenced in March. Both had pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States by interfering with the Internal Revenue Service. They operated CMH Enterprises, also known as CMH Tax & Notary Service, in Everman, a suburb of Fort Worth. They filed income tax returns from 2005 to 2008 that reported business income and expenses for businesses that did not exist, exemptions and credits for dependents that did not exist and falsely claimed earned income and education credits, according to court records. Prosecutors said they did it to defraud the government for tax refunds.